THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION Brookings Cafeteria Podcast How we connect: Network revolutions from Gutenberg to Google February 22, 2019 CONTRIBUTORS FRED DEWS Host Managing Editor for New Digital Products BILL FINAN Host Director, Brookings Institution Press TOM WHEELER Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation JOSEPH PARILLA Fellow - Metropolitan Policy Program (MUSIC) DEWS: Welcome to the Brookings Cafeteria. The Podcast about ideas and the experts who have them. I’m Fred Dews. How we connect defines who we are says former SCC Chair Tom Wheeler, the guest on today’s episode. He is author of a new book published by the Brookings Institution Press titled, From Gutenberg to Google: The History of our Future. In which he brings to life the great network revolutions of our past to help us understand and deal with what is to come. You’ll hear my colleague, Bill Finan’s interview with him in just a moment. Also, on today’s episode, Metropolitan Policy Program Fellow, Joseph Parilla, shares his thoughts on Amazon’s decision to discontinue plans to open a new headquarters in New York City and what this means for economic development incentives. You can follow the Brookings Podcast network on Twitter @policypodcasts to get the latest information about all our shows, including Dollar and Cents, the Brookings’ trade Podcast, Intersections, and 5 on 45. Find them on our website, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to get Podcasts. And now, on with the interview. Here’s Bill Finan, Director of the Brookings’ Institution Press. FINAN: Fred, thanks, and Tom, hello. WHEELER: How you doing, Bill? FINAN: Good. Good. Good to have you here today. You’re the former chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Before that, you were a successful business, especially in the area of cable television. But you’re also something else, a historian. How did that happen? WHEELER: Oh, you know, Bill, I was lucky enough to grow up under the influence of a grandfather who was a great lover of history and who himself made some history. And it started with him teaching me about the Civil War. Before I could drive, I had walked all the major battlefields of the Civil War eastern theater with him. And he made history come alive. FINAN: Something that you do in this new book too. I think that the portrayals you give of Gutenberg, of a host of other people throughout the book, you feel like it’s almost like you are there with them thinking through the problem. It’s just a very, very vivid illustrations. WHEELER: Well, you know, Bill, that’s one of the challenges. It is a tragedy today how little people understand of history. And part of it I’m convinced is the way we teach history because we force students to memorize dates and dead people. Okay. And that’s not what history is. History is a collection of stories that then lead to the next story. And that’s what I was trying to do in from in From Gutenberg to Google. FINAN: Yeah, and I’m a great believer in that. History is made up of people, and it’s the people who make up the stories. And so, if you start pulling that apart and just get to the dates and the dead people, you’re not going to get that story there. Your first two books were focused on the 19th century. Your newest book takes us back to the 15th century and then into today and the future. It’s about, as you write, history’s three great network revolutions. Before I ask you what those revolutions are, first what is a network revolution? How would you define that? WHEELER: SO, I think that how we connect defines who we are. That the essence of both human social interaction and economic activity are the networks that connect us. So, I tried to look at what were the network revolutions that brought us to this point, and what does it suggest about how we deal with the ongoing network revolution. FINAN: And you defined them into three. And those three are? WHEELER: So, there are three technologies in two periods. The first is the 15th century, in the middle of the 15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg developed the moveable-type printing press. And it was the original information revolution. It unlocked the information that had been kept stored away in order to increase the power of a handful of people. And then 400 years later, amidst the steam revolution, comes the steam locomotive. And the steam locomotive was the original high-speed network revolution because if you stop and think about it, from the being of time, man had been limited by geography and distance. You could go as far as animal muscle could take you, and then you had to stop. And all of a sudden, this inexhaustible iron horse, moving at what were unimaginable speeds, was the original death of distance. But then immediately on the heels of that came the telegraph. And if the railroad was the death of distance, the telegraph was the end of time because it was the original electronic network. And it allowed information, again, for the first time in history, to be known simultaneously in multiple places. And taken together, those two created the Industrial Revolution and defined the 19th and 20th centuries. FINAN: And then our third revolution. WHEELER: And so, here we come today. And there are two threads that run throughout Gutenberg and Google. One is that the, “new technology,” that we are dealing with today really isn’t new. It’s a Darwinian evolution. You take the digital code for instance, that powers the internet and computers, and you peel back that onion, and it will take you back to concepts that were started by Gutenberg. And you go to the zeros and ones, the on and off of digital transmission, and it’s the same as the dots and dashes of the telegraph. So, the first thread running through the book is how all of these technologies built on each other to bring us to today. FINAN: And you make the point that all these network-driven changes, they’re redundant, not so much more so than revolutionary, but they were revolutionaries, let me it very clear and illustrate very clearly what each of them -- the redundancy is what you’re mentioning here, right? WHEELER: Yeah, but the second thread is the one you just read. FINAN: Okay. WHEELER: And that is that when these earlier network revolutions were taking place, they were causing great social and economic upheaval in society. And so, when we have the internet revolution, we should be surprised that we’re seeing that same kind of upheaval today. And so, I believe that the story that is in From Gutenberg to Google tells us how we got here technically, tells us how others dealt with similar situations, and maybe hopefully helps inform us with how we can deal with today’s situation. FINAN: And in terms of how others have dealt with these revolutions -- they were some of my favorite parts of the book as those stories you tell. And you write about each network revolution having its own generation of naysayers. WHEELER: Right. FINAN: Those who found nothing but regress or even evil in the new inventions that came about. And the book is filled with stories of these naysayers. Can you tell us a couple of stories from the first two revolutions, Gutenberg and the telegraph and the railroad? WHEELER: Well, of course, Gutenberg because he freed up information, he was a challenge to the establishment. And the Catholic church, which was the leading establishment at that point in time, first saw the printing press as a plus because all of a sudden, we could make sure that we had Bibles and hymnals out in even the smallest parishes because the costs were reduced dramatically. But then oops, at the same point in time, the printing press was spreading Luther and other ideas challenging the status quo. And it’s fascinating that the Bishop of Mainz -- Mainz Germany, was where Gutenberg had his shop. The Bishop of Mainz first came out and said oh, this is the greatest thing ever. And then a couple of years later had to regroup and say no, now we’re going to start censoring what it can do because it’s too much upheaval there. Probably my favorite story though is the story of what Samuel F.B. Morris had to go through to get the federal funding for his first telegraph line. That on the floor of the House of Representatives, the bill to authorize -- get ready for this, $30,000. Okay. FINAN: What you said is about a million dollars today. WHEELER: A million dollars today, yes. FINAN: Yes, not a huge sum even. WHEELER: But the bill to authorize the money to build the first telegraph line to Baltimore. The members of Congress could not understand the idea of sending messages by sparks. And they had this circus atmosphere that started on the House floor where they were proposing amendments to fund trials of mesmerism, which is hypnotism, to send messages. But the most telling thing of all is that the final vote on the bill in the House of Representatives, it barely squeaked by. I think it was like 89 to 83. But what was significant, they were 70 members of Congress who abstained. They could not face telling their constituents that they have voted for $30,000 for sparks over a wire to send messages.